Taxi Driver Online

Last I heard, they were sawing the heads off Christians with bread knives. That's when they weren't eating human hearts and livers on youtube

Loveable bunch that Cameron and Obama are backing

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So why have the worlds policemen sat on their asses regarding the situation in Zimbabwe? Correct me if im wrong but isnt Mugabe a tyrant who wins election after election in corrupt fashion? Hasnt he tortured enough people too?
Answers on a postcard please (especially from those who are so supportive of us going to war in Syria)

http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses- ... ns/168135/

Source: AAV/Facebook

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Sounds very feasible, engineered with Western connections.

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if you cannot be yourself, then who can you be.

I would wait until the UN confirm there has been, and then bomb the ones who have it and the means to deploy it.

However I suspect the Syrian Army will be the main thrust of the attack.

As for what's acceptable in respect of kids, well many in this country are prepared to see them gassed, so I find that a strange question.

But my answer is none.

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IDFIMH

Western governments don't like the Iranians, so a blind eye was taken when the Iranian Army was gassed.

As for the Kurds, if it wasn't for Western governments Saddam would have gassed a lot more.

All that said 1000+ folks were killed by being gassed, some say never mind let those that did it be, I say otherwise.

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IDFIMH

Because many in the West don't really care when one black man kills another.

And those that do get told we shouldn't be the world's policeman.

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IDFIMH

I'm not prepared to see any kids, or anyone else gassed Sussex. I'm also not prepared to sit quietly and watch the US back the very scumbags who may well have committed this atrocity and most definitely have committed many atrocities.
Some of the same scumbags British forces have been getting killed by for the last dozen years FFS.

I'm also not prepared to see the US bombing people to change a regime, just because it suits their financial interests and those of their friends.

It's quite shocking really how many are still prepared to believe the same people who lied to us about Iraq and WMDs. Their heads must zip up the back.
If that lot told me water was wet, I'd be checking for myself.

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I say make sure you know who did it before dropping bombs. Don't just take the word of proven liars with vested interests.

BTW, kids blown up by Western countries are just as dead as kids gassed by arabs.

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EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack
Rebels and local residents in Ghouta accuse Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaida linked rebel group.
By Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh | August 29, 2013

This image provided by by Shaam News Network on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, purports to show several bodies being buried in a suburb of Damascus, Syria during a funeral on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013. Syrian government forces pressed their offensive in eastern Damascus on Thursday, bombing rebel-held suburbs where the opposition said the regime had killed more than 100 people the day before in a chemical weapons attack. The government has denied allegations it used chemical weapons in artillery barrages on the area known as eastern Ghouta on Wednesday as "absolutely baseless." (AP Photo/Shaam News Network)

This image provided by by Shaam News Network on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, purports to show several bodies being buried in a suburb of Damascus, Syria during a funeral on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013, following allegations of a chemical weapons attack that reportedly killed 355 people. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network)

Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents.

Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is exclusive to MintPress News.

Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.

Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.

The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.

“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.

Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.

More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.


Saudi involvement

In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” Ingersoll wrote.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.

“Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.

“Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves this guy,” he added.

According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA realized Saudi Arabia was “serious” about toppling Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar to lead the effort.

“They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.

Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.

The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:

His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a person familiar with the meetings.

Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.

Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”

But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.

Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’ strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his capacity to use chemical weapons:

Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who deployed them.

It is important to remember that Assad has been accused of using poison gas against civilians before. But on that occasion, Carla del Ponte, a U.N. commissioner on Syria, concluded that the rebels, not Assad, were probably responsible.

Some information in this article could not be independently verified. Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates .

Dale Gavlak is a Middle East correspondent for Mint Press News and has reported from Amman, Jordan, writing for the Associated Press, NPR and BBC. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Gavlak covers the Levant region, writing on topics including politics, social issues and economic trends. Dale holds a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Contact Dale at dgavlak@mintpressnews.com

Yahya Ababneh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and is currently working on a master’s degree in journalism, He has covered events in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Libya. His stories have appeared on Amman Net, Saraya News, Gerasa News and elsewhere.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses- ... ns/168135/

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Monday, September 2, 2013
Are "bomb them" or "do nothing" really the only options?

Witnessing the British Prime Minister David Cameron and his warmongering defence secretary William Hague receive a bloody nose from parliament was a refreshing surprise. To witness the gracelessness of their defeat has been more than that, it's been hilarious.

Cameron and Hague come out of this with no credit all, they look like a pair of desperate warmongers, too inept even to convince their own MPs to support their "rush to war". If the 30 rebel Tory MPs hadn't voted against their own government and just abstained instead, Cameron would have got his beloved war, despite Ed Miliband's demands that believable evidence is presented first.

Instead of petulantly hurling unstatesmanlike abuse at Ed Miliband for defeating their "rush to war", perhaps the Tory warmongers should focus on their own roles in this debacle, and ask themselves why 30 of their own Tory MPs voted against their plans, and why countless more Tories deliberately abstained. If anyone is "to blame" for them not getting their beloved war, it is themselves, for failing to make the case so bloody badly that their own MPs rebelled against the party whip to vote against it.

Both Cameron and Hague have been pushing for war in Syria for years (here's an article I wrote almost a year ago), so anyone with even the slightest grain of intelligence could see that they were simply using the shocking chemical weapons incident in Ghouta as an excuse to push an agenda they supported months and years before the attack even took place. Their demonstration of contempt for the evidence, contempt for the United Nations weapons inspectors, feigned moral outrage and their blatant capitalisation on the horrifying deaths of so many civilians in order to push a pre-determined political agenda, was so distasteful to behold that even a large proportion of their own MPs voted against them.

The leader of the opposition comes out with a little more credit. No matter what his political motivations, without Miliband taking the stance he did, the UK would now be rushing into a conflict without proper evidence, without public support and at a time when countless libraries are being shut down and thousands of police and army personnel are being laid off because we supposedly "can't afford them".

Ed Miliband has been taking a barrage of criticism from the press for his role in stalling the Tory rush to war (the media love a good juicy war don't they?) but to me, even if he fluked himself into holding what appears to be a sensible position on this issue, that must mean that he is due at least some credit. Still, being less of a warmongering dick than William Hague or David Cameron is hardly worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize though is it?

As enjoyable as this democratic resistance to Imperialist "interventionism" was, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't look set to make a lot of difference. As it stands, the US are still mad keen to start a bombing campaign against the Syrian government, despite the loss of their craven sidekicks in the UK, the flawed evidence and the inherent risks involved in interfering militarily in a volatile situation (they could make the whole situation a hell of a lot worse, particularly for neighbouring countries).

That parliament reached their decision to veto military action, despite the insidious war-drumming of the press, is an all to rare testament to our antiquated and unrepresentative political system. There are countless examples of this insidious pro-war slanting, but for me, one of the worst came from the BBC when William Hague was spoon fed a ludicrously loaded question on the Today programme, in which the case was made to Hague that the only possible options were to launch military strikes, or to do nothing.

This question was a clear example of a false dichotomy between the stance of the government and a straw-man position held by virtually nobody. The only people counseling for us to absolutely nothing are the extreme-right Islamophobes who hold all Muslims in contempt, and seem utterly unaware of the numerous other religious denominations that have existed in Syria for Centuries (including many Christians), many of whom are absolutely petrified of the thought of Syria being ruled over by the Saudi Arabian and Qatari financed Islamist fanatics that have flooded into the country to fight against the Assad government (Islamist fanatics that Cameron, Hague and Obama are keen to fight alongside).

The premise that the only two choices are launching cruise missile strikes and "doing nothing" creates an absurdly over-simplified loaded question, one that was clearly asked in order to benefit William Hague's case for war by allowing him to favourably contrast his policy of lobbing cruise missiles into the conflict zone with the ludicrous straw-man stance that we should do absolutely nothing.

There are obviously countless alternatives to these two extremist stances, some of which could be:

Wait for actual evidence of who was responsible for the chemical weapons deployment in Ghouta before launching military strikes (what Ed Miliband was arguing for).
An increase in the amount of humanitarian aid for Syria, and the neighbouring countries which are receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees.
A debate with Russia and China on what actions relating to Syria they would actually approve of at the United Nations (a UN mandated ceasefire perhaps?).
The development of a negotiation strategy between the opposing forces.

In my view, far from "not being an option", as the BBC would have us believe, a negotiated settlement is actually the only viable option if the objective is a peaceful resolution to the conflict (rather than some imperialist empire building project, or a deliberate attempt to destabilise the region).

I realise that I'm just a blogger with no real political influence, but I'll spend a few moments to set out the kind of strategy I would be calling for if I did have some influence.

1. A ceasefire between the two sides, with UN peacekeepers if necessary.
2. Negotiations to begin, with something along the lines of Assad to resign in return for the disbandment of the Islamist militias and the expulsion of foreign fighters from the country.
3. Moderate elements from the Syrian opposition to form a government of national unity with moderate elements of the regime.
4. The government of national unity to work on reconstruction and reconciliation projects, and towards development of a timetable for democratic elections.
5. Proper investigations to be mounted into numerous war crimes, such as chemical weapons attacks, civilian massacres and the execution of clearly surrendered prisoners, with suspects from both sides to stand trial at the International Criminal Court.

Even though the corporate media, the BBC and the Tory warmongers would love the British people to think about the situation in simplistic binary terms (bomb them or do nothing), in my view the idea that the appalling situation in Syria can be improved by firing a load of cruise missiles into Damascus is as ludicrous as the idea that the only other option is to do absolutely nothing, and I'm determined to maintain the stance that the best possible solution would surely come about through a negotiated diplomatic settlement.

The problem with promoting peace negotiations of course, is that a negotiated diplomatic settlement would suit neither the interests of the media nor the establishment. The media love nothing more than a "lovely juicy war" to sell more copy and the establishment clearly hanker after the days of imperialism, when Britain could bomb and invade countries at will, even if they can only get away with it these days by piggybacking on American imperialism. It's simply not pragmatic to argue for the only sane course of action, because the people with the power to make it happen, have absolutely no interest in doing so. So little interest in fact, that they'd have you believe that it doesn't even exist as an option.

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk ... ution.html

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These people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzem-NaqBe4

Good call.

What is really mind blowing is the acceptance of "allegations" as facts by politicians and the press.....that is truly scary

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin